More than 20 years ago, Open Access meant content available for free with no added price. This type of Open Access is now referred to as Free Open Access. Over time, as the concept of open access became more widely accepted, there was a need to be clearer about what users were allowed to do with content, which meant that users’ rights had to be clearly stated. This type of Open Access has no price barriers and at least removes some permission barriers. The phrases Gratis and Libre can be used to categorize intellectual assets freely available to the users. “Open Access” is an all-encompassing term that encompasses both Gratis and Libre Open Access. While Libre open access is information or data that is both free and unrestricted by copyright and license restrictions, Gratis open access refers to information that is freely available, however it may be subject to copyright and license constraints.

The journal’s open access articles are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license permits the work to be shared, copied, reproduced, and adapted in any size and format other than for commercial use, including re-editing, transforming, and building upon the original work, provided that appropriate reference is made to the original work. As long as you comply with the license terms, the licensee cannot revoke these freedoms (the rights stated).